The Wicked Witch of the South
by EfinityFabala
Summary: So much happened after Dorothy dropped in...
1. The Neighborhood Marvel

Author's Note: I have a very... loose understanding of the book. I read parts of it *hangs head in shame* my main devotion focuses on the musical. So I apologize for any blips in Ozian geography or landscape, or anything for that matter.

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**Chavillia Thropp**

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_Shoes clattered on a dark stone staircase, going up._

_"Are they following?" gasped the one in the hat._

_"Uh, yeah; of course they are!" spat the one clutching the book._

_"No need for attitude, Delgi."_

_Two women with panic-splattered faces swung around the corner of the spiral steps._

_"Go, go, go!"_

_"Like I need prompting! The entire Gale Force is right there!"_

_"Why do you insist—" Delgi broke off, panting. She nearly tripped into Villa. "—on wearing a full-length black dress?!"_

_"I'm the only one left to wear it, of course."_

_They came to a large, cavernous, circular attic. Villa paused near the Melting Site. Her skin tingled._

_"Time to fly."_

_She allowed Delgi to clamber onto the broom behind her, jumped nimbly onto the rusty black railing of the balcony, and took off into a storm._

_._

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Like Elphaba, she spent the better part of her childhood in Quadling country, but had been born elsewhere. Chavillia Thropp (with the given last name Ordling) had been born of the Winkie variety, in a disgracefully small Winkie village, where the best lighting was at sunset. Orange and red lit the village on fire, mingling with purple and blue shadows. A true treat for artistic eyes, the one pride of the village.

But she was only half-Winkie, on her mother's side.

Her father had, in retrospect, beaten the Wizard at his own twisted game of transcending Ozian-Kansas boundaries. When he was only eighteen, he had arrived on the outskirts of Oz, stumbling into the curious view of the Winkies. They took him in, feeling no need to announce a strange young man to the world, much less make him their leader. He had arrived in far less a spectacular way than a hot air balloon. As Chavillia recalled from his story, he had been carried in, dangling unimpressively from the talons of the biggest bird Oz had ever seen. He'd nearly died on the flight over, had no memory of the transition, and was merely glad to see people again.

He lived among them until he met Susetta, a Winkie woman exactly his age, betrothed to a dull man from a city miles away. How thrilled was she to run away with the exciting local celebrity.

Erdolf Ordling (whose family had an impressive history of unfortunate names) had come from a star he called "New York". He said it was the brightest one.

Now, don't go thinking that there are men dropping out of every state in the continental U.S. and landing in Oz. That would be a wicked lie. The truth about Ozian-Earthly boundaries is that they are very unstable, very unreliable, and that time is a strange variable in between. Erdolf Ordling was the first, and perhaps the luckiest American to ever land in Oz…

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Over two decades later, his memory almost completely washed clean of pre-Ozian existence; Erdolf Ordling lounged on a sunny porch in Quadling country with his Winkie wife, Susetta, and a tiny daughter named Villa. Winkieland had been unsatisfactory to Erdolf, a flimsy and meaningless country. And so he convinced his Susetta to come live among the Quadlings.

Willing to follow him anywhere was Susetta. She hated her homeland as much as he did. Quadlings, she concluded, were a bit of a step down, but at least they had personality.

"Falabalaba," Villa, only five, babbled quietly. "Fabala." The child, sitting in the lush, marshy grass of Quadling country, played with pebbles in the dirt. Her parents seemed to think nothing of the jibberish.

"Don't get too dirty, Lovey," Susetta called, an ever-present sunhat protecting her from the rays. "Fetching bathwater is such a hassle..." Their bucket had a mysterious hole in it, and the Ordlings often had to borrow from the Thropps. Old Frexspar Thropp, being the uneventful person that he was, often offered to help fetch from the river. He was gray and a tad plump, but Villa and Susetta both liked him.

How famous was Elphaba, yet? Not at all. She was a mere teenager, skin bizarrely brownish with Quadling Sun sunburn, a neighborhood marvel… and nothing more.


	2. The Talking Stringbean

**Sorry this is short. I'm battling Writer's Block (already) and I want to establish Elphie/Villa's views of each other.**

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"Hey, look, it's the talking string bean!" A group of Quadling teenage boys cackled and pointed at young Elphaba. It was the hottest day of the summer. Sixteen-year-old Elphaba's gardening spade dug into the ground viciously as they passed by.

It happened to be the day of the week that Elphaba babysat Chavillia Ordling, who she thought of as the little twerp next door.

Five-year-old Villa secretly admired Elphaba. She didn't understand a lot of the names coming from the boys, but she did see the expression on Elphaba's face, half-hidden beneath her sunhat.

"HEY!" she screeched, discovering a natural ability to be really, really loud. "Shove off, you morons! Elphaba's crying!" They all fell silent. Elphaba looked up sharply at the five-year-old.

"I am not!" she snarled, which was true. The contortion of her face made it look like she was about to. "I don't cry, Villa. And I don't care about those drunk idiots. Now shut up." Meanwhile, a fresh outburst of laughter came from the boys.

"BWAHAHAHA! She's got a bodyguard!" the declared. A few of them spit in Elphaba's direction. Chavillia's fists trembled. Before Elphaba could look up, (not that she would have stopped her), the three-foot curly-haired girl had covered the twenty feet separating her from the boys and was pummeling the nearest one with her fists. "Agh!" he yelled, grabbing her arms and prying her away from him. She grabbed his pants at the last moment and ripped them down. The boy looked mortified. His friends burst out laughing again.

"Hey, Thropp! Control this kid, will you!" the fellow with no pants cried hoarsely. Chavillia had no intention of letting go of him. She clung to his leg as he hobbled around and yelled at his friends for help.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Elphaba had actually been moments away from a serious magical tantrum, but the sight of the lead boy's patched-up undergarments kept the anger at bay... just barely. Maybe Villa Ordling wasn't so useless after all.


End file.
